Will Protest Voting Shift The Outcome Of This Year’s Election?

Many voters say they feel disenfranchised by the entire process. Going into the Democratic and Republican national conventions, only about 43 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans are satisfied with their party’s presumptive nominee. That’s the lowest for Democrats since 1992­­ when Bill Clinton first ran for president against incumbent George H.W. Bush ­­ according to a recent Pew Research Center poll.

Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson speaks with Rebecca Sinderbrand, senior editor at the Washington Post and Jeff Grynaviski, associate professor of political science at Wayne State University about whether disenfranchised voters will have a significant effect on the presidential election in November.

“Both of [the presidential candidates] have negatives that are higher than any negative that we have ever seen in the modern era for political candidates,” says Sinderbrand.

While there is dissatisfaction with the candidates in both parties, Sinderbrand says that, ”right now, a greater percentage of Bernie Sanders voters saying that they will back Hillary Clinton than Hillary Clinton voters ever said about Barack Obama in 2008. We’re seeing numbers, 85 percent, 90 percent, in some polls, so there’s a remarkable amount of democratic unity.”

“On the Republican side it is very much a work in progress, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in Cleveland…They are united on the ultimate goal, they still have not united on a strategy, [or] a candidate…and time has more or less run out,” according to Sinderbrand.

“As things kind of shake out, a lot of the anti-Trump supporters are going to kind of fall into the Donald Trump camp in the long term,” says Grynaviski.

Click on the audio player at the top of the page to hear the entire conversation.

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